If tourists were still allowed into the New York Stock Exchange, they could have a viewed a little circus yesterday.

Not elephants or tigers, just angry reporters and equally annoyed exchange officials doing a dance of egos.

There were nasty remarks, threats of calling lawyers and at least one camera and data disk seized by officials from a Wall Street Journal reporter.

It all began when the NYSE bowed to pressures and let the news media examine a foot-high stack of confidential documents surrounding a controversial $140 million pay package for exchange chief Dick Grasso.

“It was a sham,” said one of the dozens of journalists allowed to examine the voluminous documents in two-hour shifts. “There was only enough time to examine just a small part of the evidence.”

It began at 7 a.m., when reporters, surrounded by tight security, were first ushered into a small room containing four identical stacks of would-be smoking guns and told to read as fast as they could in their two-hour slots.

By midday – several shifts later – the exchange officials were trying to shorten the two-hour blocks by as much as 15 minutes, raising immediate protests from journalists.

“This stinks,” one news agency staffer blurted.

At one point, Wall Street Journal reporter Theo Francis whipped out a small a digital camera to photograph key documents scattered on the table, but was immediately blocked by an exchange official, who demanded Francis’s film.

“Call our lawyer,” said another Journal reporter, Susanne Craig.

After a bitter exchange, the NYSE claimed the documents were private, and forced the reporter to erase his camera’s disk, and seized both.

Francis shot back: “We can transcribe all this word for word, but it’s too private for pictures?”

Some journalists began quibbling over the minutes of valuable time available to see the paperwork. Some complained that other groups had three or four minutes longer than others.

Exchange officials seemed amused, but grim security guards hovered over the journalists, checking to see that nothing was taken from the stacks of documents.